Humans, Devotees and God

Looking at Humans through the eyes of a God’s devotee:

Today I came across a poem by Sarah Rian. She had titled it,

Then Death Came:

You had a sad death

But you are not a sad thing.

Your life is important.

Your story is more

than its sad ending.

I’m sorry it often brings

more tears than smiles.

I promise that you are

far from a sad thing.

It opened up floodgates of memories and topics that were waiting to be explored in a better light than they have until now. 

The poem specifically brought alive memories of my dear brother. For my parents, I was the first born. 2 years and 4 months after me they had welcomed my brother Milind. 2 years and 2 months after him they welcomed my sister Minal. I do not recall the arrival of my brother but I vividly remember the day Minal arrived. Ever since that day, we were a family of 5. Never had the faintest inkling that we would become a family of four again before we all had turned old. Saddest part is that it wasn’t one of our parents who left before their kids. It was Milind. At barely 31, he was gone. One day he was there. The next day he wasn’t. Just like that. No accident. No physical illness. Not a victim of homicide. A victim of a broken heart. He thought death would be less painful than life. And so he invited death. When none of us was home. Just his beloved dog who couldn’t call 911 or text one of us to save his favorite human. And so it was all over in that night. 

Over for him. Certainly not for the people he left behind. They had to make sense out of it. Those who are alive are thrust with the burden of finding a meaning to everything. Happiness and meaning are soul mates. They can’t live apart. 

I am not sure if my dad, my mom and Minal ever found meaning to Milind’s story. I certainly didn’t. Having no meaning to Milind’s story implied that it remained a painful chapter that we were scared to read. We avoided going down that alley. It was such a dark place and there were no headlights that could build our confidence enough to visit it after so many years. So we kept moving in the direction where we found light. 

I wrote earlier that I could not find a meaning to Milind’s story. That is, until I came across this poem today. And I am thankful to this woman who wrote this poem and shared it on social media. Because, unbeknownst to her, this poem flashed the floodlights I needed to take a good look at the dark chambers of my heart. Those chambers that until now were occasionally revealing a glimmer here and there from street lights but not enough to give a clear view. The poem did for me what nothing else could. 

You had a sad death

But you are not a sad thing.

I had never been able to separate Milind from his last moments. Until I read this line.

Your life is important.

How could I disregard this truth? But I did. Because the last moments made everything blur out. 

His life was indeed important. My childhood was undeniably richer because of a brother in my life. A brother who was sensitive, kind and caring towards everyone around him. He cared as a child, he cared as a brother, he cared as a son , he cared as a friend, he cared as an husband and he cared as a doctor. People remember him for the times he went out of his way to help them, comfort them, be there for them. The young doctor who noticed a tribal elder on the street with a fractured leg, put him on the back of his motorcycle, brought him home to operate on the leg, fix the fracture, nurse him in his hospital, feed him, free of charge until he was ready to be dropped to his village, also on the doctor’s motorcycle! 

Yes Milind’s life was important. Because no one can find a doctor like him if they go looking. Because my mother can never have another son. Because Minal and me can never have a brother to grow old with us. Because our kids couldn’t play much longer on his shoulders like they did at one time. Because none of us are capable of loving dogs as unconditionally as dogs love humans. 

Your story is more

than its sad ending.

That’s true even though the sad ending made me shut my eyes to the years preceding the end. But now I know better.

I’m sorry it often brings

more tears than smiles.

Also true. But from this point both tears and smiles will remain on my face at the same time when I think of you. If one of them has to be more than the other, it will be the smiles. Because the end was just a tiny segment out of your beautiful life. Your life needs to be looked at with fairness.

I promise that you are

far from a sad thing.

Indeed. I will no longer make the same mistake again of mixing up who you were as a person and what happened to you in those last days. You were a joy in our lives. And you ought to be remembered and celebrated as such. 

This poem brought a closure to the painful memory of my brother. It has changed its narrative and made it more real, more fair, more wholesome.

But it did not stop there.

It gave me a lesson about how to look at the full picture when looking at a human being. What they did or did not do is not enough to complete the picture. Their life is more than the rough arithmetic our mind runs through to give them a rating. It is often difficult to be objective about people we spend our lives within close quarters. If we make our best attempt to eliminate our personal grudges and reservations about them and then look at the finer details of their lives we can more likely see a human being neither more special nor any worse than another human being. We will see them as what they are. Which is a human being. 

Just like the poet drew the line when she said in plain words:

You had a sad death

But you are not a sad thing.

Similarly we can say, 

You displayed good things and not so good things.

But in that form

you are not God.

I promise you 

I will be fair to you

and see you as a human.

The paradigm in the head needed the shift badly. The poem facilitated it. Just so simply. 

Let us not forget to apply the paradigm to ourselves too. 

Be sensitive.

Be gentle.

Be kind.

To each and to yourself.

Be brave to see the whole picture. In each case. Not forgetting yourself.

We are God, only in our essence. 

Until we can live in that essence 

Without interruption 

We are human beings.